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Article: For 35 Cents, Chilean Workers Get a Lift and a Rickety Thrill
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- November 14, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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This city naturally pulls everything to its harbor in the
mornings. Dockside jobs draw men and women down concrete stairways
that plunge through crayon-bright neighborhoods, twisting between
thousands of painted-tin houses that cling to the hillsides.
But the reverse takes hold later in the day, inverting a
fundamental law of nature: Everything that goes down, must also go
up.
Instead of spending 15 or 20 knee-buckling minutes laboring back
up the steepest flights of winding stairs, anyone with about 35
cents can get help from the city's network of 15 "ascensores" --
cable-pulled elevator carts that follow tracks laid on some of the
city's more precipitous slopes.
Each lift features two ...